Sunday, June 30, 2013

On Sunday we celebrate the resurrection, O God; we praise you that we can go, serve, and live in the power of the resurrected Christ.

But on Sunday we are also called to rest, O God; so help us to stay and to rest in the power of the resurrected Christ.

Remind us that in the resurrection of Christ we can do what we need to do; remind us also that in the resurrection of Christ we can take time to remember that it is all about you and not about us—and that you can do without us for a while …

Saturday, June 29, 2013

Thank you for the infrastructure that allows us to get around safely; thank you for those who work hard to design it, to build it, and to maintain it. Thank you for the privilege we have as a community of citizens to share the cost through the paying of taxes and fees.

Thank you for the opportunity to expand our horizons and to broaden our experience through travel. Guard us against the notion that because we have visited a place and have sojourned briefly among a people that we understand it or them; at the same time, through such visits give us a little more understanding of what life is like for people who live in different circumstances than we do.

Thank you for the blessing of getting away; thank you for the blessing of coming back.

Friday, June 28, 2013

We acknowledge that there are many things over which we have no choice, that there are characteristics and situations into which we are born that we will do well to try to understand and to embrace rather than to try to change.

But we also acknowledge that there are many, many, many more situations and matters in which we do have a choice and in which our choices can and do make a difference.

Keep us alert to what is going on around us and in us; help us to be actively engaged and properly prepared so that we can make sound choices when opportunities to choose arise. Help us to know when we need to go with the flow and when we need to disrupt it, divert it, or dam it up.

And when we need to choose, give us the wisdom to choose well and the courage to choose at all.

Make us humble enough to know that our choices don’t make all the difference but make us rational enough to know that they can make a difference, involved enough to care about the difference they can make, and trusting enough to believe that they might contribute to the difference you want to make.

Thursday, June 27, 2013

Your Son taught us to love our neighbors as we love ourselves, which seems to mean, among other things, that we can love others appropriately only as we love ourselves appropriately. At the same time he taught us that one key to following him is to deny self.

How do we deny ourselves and at the same time love ourselves? Perhaps to love ourselves is to be so secure in who we are in you that we are willing and even eager to give ourselves away. After all, that is how you are and since you have filled us with your love we can grow in loving like you love.

You love the world—everybody in the world—so much that you gave your Son.

So help us to see every other person as you see them—as someone to whom we can give ourselves rather than as someone against whom we need to protect ourselves.

Wednesday, June 26, 2013

Help us not to dwell unhelpfully on the past, on “What if I had done this rather than that?” or “What if I had made this choice rather than that one?” Teach us to learn from the past but not to try to live in it.

Help us not to dwell unhelpfully on the future, on “What if this happens?” or “What if that happens?” Teach us to look forward to the future that you have for us but not to try to live in it.

Help us instead to live fully, freely, and creatively in the present, for this moment in which we are living and breathing is what is; it is the only time in which we have any life and thus have any options. Teach us to live well and to choose well right now.

Tuesday, June 25, 2013

It’s tempting to stay in the shallows because they feel safe—after all, our feet can stay on the ground while the water swirls around us—but in avoiding the dangers of the depths we also miss the excitement, the challenge, the wonder, and the fun.

So help us to have trust enough in you to swim out a little farther—to face the question we’ve been avoiding, to challenge the assumption we’ve always made, to take the chance we’ve been avoiding, to seize the opportunity that both excites and frightens us, to expand our experiences and thus our thinking—even if it is likely that we will get in over our head.

Monday, June 24, 2013

We thank you for our blessings but even as we thank you we ask you to lead us to treat our abundance as an opportunity to bless others. Help us to consider the implications of the fact that while so many of us have so much there are so many who have so little, that while so many of us have way more than we need there are so many who have way less than they need.

Inspire us to see our abundance as an opportunity to do great good rather than as the privilege to live in great leisure.

Make us thankful that we have enough. Lead us to use our more than enough to help those who have less than enough.

Friday, June 21, 2013

After all, we see justice and injustice like we see everything—from our particular perspective. We tend to think about matters of fairness and rightness in terms of what is fair and right for us and for our kind.

So help us to develop an expanded perspective and worldview that tries to see and to understand what life is like for “them,” for the others who experience justice and injustice in ways that are different—and maybe far different—from the ways that we experience them.

And then, insofar as is it is up to us, help us to do justice in our dealings with people.

Lead us also to do what we can to move toward the biblical ideal of justice for all—but especially for those who are least likely to experience it.

Wednesday, June 19, 2013

Lead us away from sapping our energy with useless worry; lead us instead to use our energy in useful and creative ways—to pray, to do what we can about our situation, and to help others in their troubles.

But even while we use our energy in those ways, develop in us a core in which we are always trusting in you and always resting in you.

Cause us to live in constant celebration of the fact that our lives are in your hands.

Tuesday, June 18, 2013

We acknowledge that everything that happens in our lives, be it little or big, is important and needs to be affirmed and dealt with as such. It is life, after all.

We also acknowledge that we cannot see things as you see them; we are limited while you are unlimited and we are within time while you are outside of time.

And yet we are told that you are through your Spirit with us and within us so it stands to reason that we can grow toward seeing the world and toward seeing life as you see them.

So help us to grow toward seeing things from an eternal perspective that takes all things seriously but that also sees them in their proper context—the context of your eternal gracious purpose toward which you are moving all things.

Monday, June 17, 2013

Most of us are not mean and hateful; we do not try to do harm to others and we do not want others to suffer. We are much more likely, though, to close our eyes and our lives to those who are suffering.

We are also likely to close our eyes to some of the causes of much of the suffering that goes on in our society, causes that have to do with power, with money, with greed, and with exploitation.

Forgive us for our apathy and give us grace to turn away from it.

Fill us instead with compassion, a compassion that leads us first of all to pay attention to what is happening to other people and that then leads us to do what we can, both individually and in concert with others, to help.

Friday, June 14, 2013

Help us to choose knowledge of the world over ignorance of the world. Help us to understand that we are all limited by our context and by our experiences and lead us to expand our context and to broaden our experiences in whatever ways we can, such as through travel, through conversation, and through reading. Deliver us from narrow-mindedness.

Help us to choose knowledge of people over ignorance of people. Help us to enter into conversation with the people in our community; lead us to get to know each other. Lead us to do all we can to understand and to appreciate people of other places, other cultures, and other faiths. Deliver us from stereotyping any group of people.

Help us to choose knowledge of you over ignorance of you. Thank you for revealing yourself to us in so many ways, but especially through your Son Jesus and through your ongoing presence with us through your Spirit. Help us to take advantage of the opportunity to commune with you and to listen to you and lead us always to be growing in our relationship with you. Deliver us from settling for speculation over relationship.

Thursday, June 13, 2013

Help us first to be aware of our selves. After all, we need to know who we are before we can know what it means to give ourselves up. Cause us to take the time and to make the effort to be reflective so that we can have adequate insight into ourselves so as to make informed and careful decisions rather than respond to situations and to people in impulsive ways—unless and until sacrifice becomes our default reaction.

Help us second to be aware of situations that call us to give ourselves up for the sake of another or for the sake of others. Keep us alert to our tendency to want to protect self and let your love in us overcome that tendency when we need to risk ourselves for someone else’s sake. Help us always to be growing in thinking more of others than we do of ourselves.

Help us finally to be aware of the presence of Christ in us, a presence that makes an attitude and lifestyle of selflessness possible. Cause us to grow in him because as we do, his approach to people and to life will come more and more to influence ours.

Wednesday, June 12, 2013

We recognize that we cannot be involved in everything and that we cannot help everybody; some of us need to be restrained from the kind of over-involvement that will inevitably burn us out.

Most of us are far more likely, though, to practice avoidance of people who need us and of situations that call for our attention than we are to practice over-involvement. So remove from us the tendency to focus only on ourselves and on those who are closest to us or those who are most like us; lead us instead to take a broad view of who is a neighbor to us and help us to be a neighbor to those we come upon who are in need.

There are so many people who need a friend—help us to be a friend to them.

There are so many situations that need to be addressed—help us to be a part of the solution to them.

Tuesday, June 11, 2013

As situations arise, as crises occur, and as people are people, we will experience emotional reactions that come from who knows where—some combination of our evolution and our experiences, perhaps—but giving in to our tendency toward either fight or flight is not always the best response.

So help us instead to stop, to breathe, to consider, to pray, and to think. Give us a calmness in our mind that will enable us to think rationally about what is happening and to respond as a thinking person should respond.

Thank you for these marvelous brains of ours that can process so much information so quickly; help us to use them to process everything with which and everyone with whom we are confronted so that we can respond in a way that will do the most good and that will be the most helpful.

Monday, June 10, 2013

We understand that as we go through the day we will have experiences that will produce responses in us—happiness, sadness, relief, anger, gratitude, disappointment, for example—that will make an impact on us that can be lasting; those responses can affect how we will respond to and deal with similar situations in the future.

Sometimes we should carry the full weight of a response with us and sometimes we should leave it all behind us. Sometimes we should learn a lesson but leave our emotional reaction behind us. Help us to know the difference and to make our choices in light of what is best.

Give us wisdom to know what to leave behind us and what to carry with us.

Saturday, June 8, 2013

We thank you, O God, for the privilege of gathering from time to time with people who, though they may be strangers to us, are united to us by a common love.

We thank you for the way that peace, love, and soul are experienced among us in such a gathering. We thank you for the unity we experience as we sing the songs and as we listen to the spoken words. We thank you for how we overlook each other’s faults and occasional acts of thoughtlessness because it is such a joy to be together sharing our common commitment.

Yes, Lord, we thank you for concerts (in my case, rock concerts).

And on those occasions when we can thank you for similar experiences in the Church—well, we thank you for that, too.

Friday, June 7, 2013

Help us to choose wisely between expectancy and wonder. Give us the perspective that makes all the difference.

Guard us against expecting things to happen because expectation implies that we think we know or should know what is going to happen or what should happen. Then when things don’t go as we expect we are disappointed or angry even though we really had no way of knowing how things would go.

Help us instead to wonder what will happen. Help us to live with minds pointed with a wide open stance toward the future. Help us to wonder but not to fear. Help us to live with a sense of wonder and awe over what lies before us. Help us to live in trust.

Wednesday, June 5, 2013

Despair seems a viable option because there is so much suffering and sadness around us, some of it nearby and some of it far away. It is easy to believe that the world is headed toward a catastrophic end and that we are helping to push it toward such a conclusion. It is easy to throw up our hands and give up.

Don’t let us give in to despair. And when we do, help us to turn away from it quickly.

Help us instead to choose and to live in hope. Help us to believe that you in your grace and mercy are working your purposes out and that the future is in your loving and powerful hands. Help us to live in ways that reflect our trust that you have a future for us.

Tuesday, June 4, 2013

Today, there will be people. All of those people will be in need, be it physical, financial, emotional, spiritual, or social. We will become aware of some of those needs while we will remain unaware of others—but they will be there nonetheless.

We can choose to be helpful or hurtful in our response to people.

Help us not to be hurtful, either through disdain, rejection, apathy, or avoidance.

Help us instead to be helpful through prayer, attention, listening, embracing, and loving.

Sunday, June 2, 2013

Thank you, O God, for the privilege we have today of responding to that impulse in us that calls us to worship you. Thank you for putting that impulse there; thank you for inviting us into your presence and into your life.

Thank you for the privilege of worship, a privilege that comes only by your grace.

Let us pray ...

About Prayer 365

The prayers that appear at Prayer 365 are written and published by Michael L. Ruffin. Permission is granted to use or adapt these prayers in public worship with the condition that if a prayer is reproduced in a printed order of worship attribution is given. Permission is also granted to link to a prayer at this site provided that a link back to this blog is provided. All other rights are reserved. All Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version unless otherwise indicated.